Moon witness ~ Woosan

Chapter 4

For the following weeks Haneul tried to convince her brother to accept the job opportunity at the palace which the young man still rejected. To avoid his sister's nagging, he started to accept more little jobs around the city.

One day, while the moon was already high in the sky, San was heading back home. As he reached the doorsteps he could see the three young boys urgently rushing to him, all of them looking scared. San quickly understood something was wrong when he heard his sister coughing roughly from inside the barn. He rushed to her, taking in her state. The first thing he noticed was how out of it she looked, her eyes barely open and unable to focus on him. She was heavily sweating, rendering her whole face drenched. San took notice of the cold tissue placed on her forehead and for a second a feeling of pride rushed through his body at how the young kids knew what to do to help Haneul. This feeling quickly left when his sister started to have a coughing fit. San promptly asked the kids to bring him a jar of cold water and told them they should go to bed, reassuring them that Haneul would be fine.

San spent the night awake, taking care of his sister who fell unconscious at some point. He tried to establish what disease she might have the whole night without luck. Even though he was educated to treat diseases, he never encountered this one so he felt hopeless, unable to do anything to help his sister.

As the sun was starting to rise after this long sleepless night, San rushed to find a physician. Hopefully, with his additional works of the week he would be able to pay the man to save his sister. As he came into the shop of the man he went straight to the point, not wanting to lose more time.

"Mister please help us, my sister, she's really sick, please help us." San pleaded to the man, his gaze desperate. Fortunately the man seemed used to emergencies and quickly took his things and silently followed San back to their home.

As the man auscultated his sister, San watched the physician from the side, anxiously biting his nails. He had noticed his sister coughing for a few days now but he was so busy trying to avoid her he didn't pay too much attention to it. At this moment, San really thought he was the worst brother ever. He couldn't even take care of his only family.

The physician tore him out of his mind when he got up from his chair besides Haneul's bed, turned to San before walking up to him.

"What does she have sir? Will she be able to heal?" San asked the man, hoping for good news.

"She has astiphlus." At the confused look San threw at the physician, the latter added "It is caused by a bacteria in her lungs. It seems like she reacted quite badly to the bacteria so I would advise you to give her all the medicines necessary and to closely watch over the evolution of her symptoms." The physician concluded.

"Will she heal if I give her the medicine? The disease can't go away on its own?"

"Astiphlus is a pretty common disease around here so our medicines works wonder on it. She will get better if she takes them. However if she doesn't the bacteria will most probably slowly end up killing her. There are a few people who naturally heal from it but seeing the state she is already in I wouldn't recommend betting on it." The physician told San. He's been doing this job all his life so he met his fair share of poor people who couldn't afford to save their closed ones or even some who could but wouldn't do anything as they wanted to keep the little money they had to eat. He secretly hoped the young man would decide to save his sister. The worst thing for him as a physician was to see young people like this woman, dying without being able to do anything.

"Please save her. I'm begging you sir, I'll pay for her medecine. Just save her please." San almost went down his knees, tears starting to fall on his cheeks. He couldn't lose his sister. He wouldn't allow that to happen.